In today's medical world Computerized Tomography scanning (a CT or CAT scan) is known to be very common investigation procedure, which provides a cross sectional view of the body. CAT scans are used to locate organs and anatomical features or abnormalities such as lesions and tumors within the organs Conventional X-ray generates only two dimensional flat view of organs. However, use of a CAT scan provides for viewing of organs in three dimensional form as well.
For planning a medical procedure such as surgical operation or radiation therapy, identifying the location of anatomical features such as organs, defects, lesions or tumors by reference to a location on the surface of the body (skin) is very important.
There are several methods for marking the location of organs externally on skin. The oldest and most common method involves identifying body landmarks from which the distance to organs is calculated, followed by marking the location. However such method has its own possibility of errors.
Another method involves the use of radio-opaque markings on skin followed by CAT scan. However, it may need multiple scan to delineate an organ with the possibilities of errors. This is because the exact position of the organ cannot be located accurately just by placing the marker randomly. Thus, there are fair chances of involvement of the errors.
Another method involves carrying out the CAT scan with sheets comprising of oblique radio-opaque lines. In this method, the resultant image must be processed through a special computer program and translated on to specialized equipment called stereo-tactic device. Thus, the drawback associated with this method include that it requires special computer program and stereo-tactic frame (equipment), which is very expensive and requires special training.
Hence, there is a need to develop a novel device for marking location of organs on skin as per CAT scan to assist medical persons, which can address the aforesaid problems. In particular, such devices should not require the use of expensive specialized equipment so that it is more readily available. The device and method should also result in accurate and reproducible CAT scans. With the help of this device a medical person can easily mark on skin location of organs as per CAT scan.